


Old Familiar

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Brock Rumlow Is Really Nasty, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Featuring Deep Fried Brock Rumlow, Gaslighting, HYDRA Trash Party, Idfic, M/M, Manipulation, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Rape/Non-con Elements, Some Drug Use, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships, just so you know, this is not a Rumlow redemption fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2019-10-04 04:42:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17297987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Post CA:TWS, Rumlow finds Bucky before he can fully get his memories back.Do not expect anything of redeeming value from this piece of fanfiction. It's just going to be garbage.





	1. Chapter 1

Rumlow catches up with him outdoors, in a trash-strewn patch of woods near a railway line. The soldier has obtained clothes from somewhere, and shoes, and a bag, and possibly he was planning on going somewhere on one of the trains that roll past regularly at onboardable speeds, but now he is slumped under a tree with his bag next to him. He smells like vomit. There are pieces of dead leaves caught in his hair.

He’s focused, though, staring up at Rumlow from the ground. His eyes narrow in a way that seems to show recognition, but he makes no attempt to move.

Rumlow would like to get down to his level and get in his personal space, but the movement would be too painful on his not-quite-healed wounds and his fucked-up scars, so he just stands over him, boots crunching on the cold ground. “You gotta learn to do better, buddy,” he says.

The soldier stares up at him, steadily. His human hand is shaking, and he covers it with his left, gloved one as if that can hide it. _Does_ he recognize Rumlow? The soldier is good with faces, despite the obvious memory problems, but on the other hand Rumlow is half-covered in gauze bandages that haven’t been changed since he quit the hospital, and hasn’t had time to wash properly since he started tracking the soldier, and probably looks like he stumbled out of an old shitty movie about explorers and curses and mummies.

That part is not so bad, actually. He likes the idea of being a curse.

“If you’d let me get to you sooner, this wouldn’t have happened,” he says, half to himself, because he isn’t sure the soldier is really listening. The words are a lie, anyway. The slow-release drugs the scientists put in the soldier’s arm are clearly wearing off—it’s happened before, on missions that lasted longer than expected, and then as now Rumlow cannot do shit about it. He isn’t even sure what exactly the drugs _are_ —just that they probably contain a lot of painkillers, because Hydra was always far more inclined to dose the soldier up than to try to fix any of his physical problems or give him time to heal properly.

And Rumlow couldn’t have helped the soldier with that even if he _did_ have any painkillers to spare. If he had any painkillers to spare he would already have taken them himself.

The soldier looks up at him. It’s already starting to get dark, and the air is cold and the ground must be colder, but his face is wet with sweat. He looks angry, but more than that he just looks miserable. Rumlow had expected more of a reaction, considering how long he'd spent running. This is not bad, though.

“Stand up,” Rumlow says, and if the soldier hadn’t obeyed, Rumlow probably just would have shot him right there, and maybe himself as well, because scary appearance aside, Rumlow is fucked if he doesn’t get help, and his immediate future survival relies on this idiot’s obedience.

The soldier stands, though. It takes him a second or two to get himself together enough to do it, and he looks like he has no idea _why_ he’s doing it, but he pulls himself to his feet and stands, looking only a little unsteady.

God, he smells bad.

“You know who I am?” Rumlow says.

“Commander,” the soldier says and looks confused again. Then the expression changes to something close to relief, face softening like he is happy about the memory.

That’s a trip. Most people don’t look _relieved_ when they remember Rumlow. Then again, their relationship had always been kind of special.

“You’re coming with me,” Rumlow says firmly.

The soldier simply looks at him, looking sullen and rather stuck-up for someone who smells like they have forgotten showering exists. He doesn’t move, unless you count the slight swaying he is doing on his feet. Apparently he’s happy to sit out here in the cold and throw up on himself until he freezes or starves or wanders onto a train track.

And it’s not like Rumlow can drag him. Can’t physically do anything unless the soldier lets him. Rumlow is tired and sore, but he still has it together enough to know he needs to change tactics.

He softens his tone in turn, steps closer. “I was always nice to you. Wasn’t I. You remember that part, yeah.”

No answer. The woods around them are quiet, just wind and the very faint sound of traffic from far away. A fast-food wrapper is caught in a bare branch not far from the soldier’s head, shuddering in the breeze. 

It’s true, as well. Rumlow had always been extraordinarily nice.

“You remember a lot of stuff, don’t you,” he goes on. “You remember a little bit about everything, and you’ve been trying to work things out. Figure out good and evil and all that shit, after it’s all been messed up in your head for so long.”

The soldier doesn’t answer, just stares. Rumlow is close enough now to smell the old sweat and the vomit and the strange chemical smell that might be coming from his arm or from his skin. He reaches out to touch him, and the soldier flinches.

Rumlow keeps the flicker of annoyance off his face. Reaching his arm up like that had hurt, and _that’s_ how he reacts?

Still, he forces a little smile onto his face. “I’m gonna help you out with part of what you’re trying to learn,” he says. “Lesson one: If someone’s nice to you, you do nice things in return.”

“You were Hydra,” the soldier says, almost cutting him off, like he’s just remembered it and needs to tell him immediately.

Rumlow shrugs, despite the pain it causes. “So were you.”

That’s enough, apparently, to short-circuit him. The soldier stares at him blankly. Finally he gives an almost-imperceptible nod.

“You’re going to help me,” Rumlow says, firm again now.

The soldier looks confused, like the moment of clarity has already dissipated. But then an odd expression of relief appears again. Maybe in this state, an order is actually a comfort.

“I have transport,” Rumlow says, and the soldier is already relaxing a little, body language changing like he's prepared to follow. “You don’t actually have to do much at all.”

This is, obviously, another lie.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The soldier folds his body down into the passenger seat like it’s his last act before dying. He drops his bag down at his feet and then curls forward a little, one hand pressed against his stomach through the filthy jacket he’s wearing. Rumlow shoves the soldier’s leg out of the way of the car door and goes to close it, and then sees that the other man is looking up at him, his gaze still weirdly sharp and focussed.

“I am not going to kill anyone,” the soldier says.

It is the longest string of words Rumlow has heard him put together so far. And it’s a good sign: Rumlow needs to use the soldier for their first task as quickly as possible, just in case he starts to deteriorate further. If the soldier collapses or gets completely incoherent before they’re in a good stable environment, they’re both fucked. He holds Rumlow’s gaze, as well, skin washed-out and filthy under the car’s interior light, but his face still hard and determined. He clearly expects Rumlow to argue, or worse.

Instead, Rumlow just nods, and closes the car door.

He takes his time walking around the to other side of the car to get in the driver seat. Not that he could go that fast even if he wanted to, in his current physical condition, but still. He opens the driver door, sits down leisurely, takes his time retrieving the key fob and turning on the engine.

The inside of the vehicle had gotten cold while he’d been away, and he turns up the heating a bit, taking his time adjusting the dials on the panel. The soldier’s eyes are still on him. Out of the corner of his eye he can see he still has one hand pressed against his stomach, like he’s cut there and trying to stop the bleeding. Can feel the confusion, the tension stretching.

“I didn’t say I wanted you to kill anyone,” Rumlow says finally. “Now put your seatbelt on. The car will beep at me if you don’t.”

That part is true. It’s a nice car: the guy he killed for it had been decently rich. An automatic, yes, but Rumlow is too fucked up to drive a manual right now. It hurts enough just to put on his own seatbelt.

The soldier doesn’t move. “I don’t want…” He stops, draws in a breath that sounds like it is painful. The new vibration of the engine seems to somehow be enough to hurt him. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, either.”

“Seatbelt,” Rumlow says.

The soldier frowns, and looks like he is going to cry. Sitting with him in the passenger seat puts the soldier’s left arm closer to him, but Rumlow still risks it: he reaches over, squeezes him above the knee, as hard as he can with his bad hand. The soldier’s skin is still warm through the thin fabric of the filthy jeans he is wearing, despite the cold outside.

The soldier looks down at his leg, then up at him again, so slow it’s almost comical.

Rumlow eases his grip, pats him above the knee, encouraging. “Don’t fret. We are on our way to do _good_ right now, soldier.”

He looks stupidly confused, but after a second he reaches up to grab the seatbelt. Rumlow lets go of his leg, and smiles. He shifts into drive, pulls the car out onto the dark road.

The soldier doesn’t ask for clarification after that, just sits, his hand still pushed against his stomach. Maybe he has remembered how little good asking questions ever did. Maybe he has just forgotten his train of thought. Whichever it is, he is quiet, and that’s fine.

It’s a long drive, and after a few miles it starts to snow. The soldier leans back a little, rests his head back against the nice leather headrest, and not long after that his breathing slows and evens out.

He’s not actually asleep, of course, but it’s a reasonable facade, and the fact that he’s got it together enough to pretend to do anything is another good sign. Maybe there will be no collapse. Maybe Rumlow caught him when he was already at the worst of it.

It’s close to midnight when he pulls the car off onto the side of a small, two-lane road. The middle of fucking nowhere, but the moon is out, and with the snow on the ground it’s way too bright out and less than ideal for what they’re doing. But it’s not like he can sit back and wait for better conditions, so he cuts the engine on the dead man’s car. “Wake up time, soldier,” he says. “We’re gonna break into a house.”

The soldier opens his eyes immediately, apparently forgetting that he’s supposed to have been in a deep sleep. He stares at Rumlow for a long moment, then out the window at the line of dark trees by the side of the road, then back. His voice is quiet and croaky when he says: “You needed me so you can break into a house?”

“This isn’t just a house, buddy. The rich asshole that lives down the road from here is William Rayner.”

The soldier frowns. Obviously he has no fucking clue what Rumlow is talking about.

“You know, the doctor? Big Hydra guy, you met him a few times? He managed to cover his own ass pretty good after the shit went down, so he’s still free. Been hiding out here a while, though. Scared.”

The soldier stares at him blankly. Now that the car is stopped and there isn’t much air moving around, Rumlow is really starting to notice the smell again.

“Whatever,” he says. “Move. Come help me gear up. You still know the codes, don’t you? If he tries to call someone?”

No answer, just more staring. He only seems to be able to manage a few sentences in a row before his brain has to stop and boot up again.

But he can walk, at least, and he manages to follow Rumlow into the woods surrounding the property without forgetting where he is or tripping over or something equally as dumb, so it’s good.

“He’s in there alone,” Rumlow says when the trees start to thin out at the perimeter of the property. He'd said all this before, at the car, but it can't hurt to repeat it. “We are gonna get in there and you are gonna incapacitate him, not kill him, all right? And no brain damage. We need this guy.”

The soldier looks at him. The moonlight on his skin makes him look about as healthy as a drowned corpse, and if it weren't for the fact that Rumlow can see his breath he might have thought the soldier had lost it so much that he'd forgotten to breathe. As Rumlow watches, he nods and tries to stand up straighter, but then sways slightly, his elbow brushing a nearby branch so that snow patters to the ground.

For a moment, his confidence wavers. There is a good chance they will both die here, brains splattered all over some douchebag doctor’s carpet because they are both so off their game and because Rumlow is an idiot. But he doesn’t have a choice, so he keeps going.

Ten minutes later, he feels dumb for even worrying.

 

 

The soldier disables the one alarm that goes off, gets through the house’s admittedly-quite-sturdy defenses with what looks like ease. Rumlow had _really_ overestimated how sick the soldier was, because he only looks a little bit pale, has barely worked up a sweat by the time he rips the metal door off of the doctor’s useless panic room and lunges inside, knocking the phone the old man is fumbling with out of his hands.

The look on stupid Reyner’s face is enough to put Rumlow in his best mood in weeks—it’s pure, childish terror; the expression of a man suddenly face-to-face with a blank-eyed, barely-human assassin who now _also_ looks and smells like a hobo.

The soldier does not notice the man’s terror, does not slow: he yanks the doctor close, restrains him with his metal arm around his neck. Swings him around so that they are both facing Rumlow: the doctor’s face is red below his neat grey hair, flushed with terror and lack of oxygen. The soldier, behind him, looks tired and angry and almost bored.

“God,” Reyner chokes, eyes on Rumlow and so wide it’s like they’re popping out of his head. “God, please don’t let him—”

Rumlow steps forward. The stun baton he had stolen from a different dead ex-coworker is clipped to his belt, next to the pocket where he’s keeping the cable ties, and although it’s not the modified Hydra type that can take down someone like the soldier, it’s enough to do this particular job. Rumlow flicks it on, smiles, and taps the end of it against the man’s forehead.

The doctor slumps, going loose in the soldier’s grip without even a scream. Man, this shit never gets old.

“Tie him up and double check he didn’t call anybody,” Rumlow says. He drops the cable-ties on the carpeted floor near the soldier’s feet. “I’ll do a quick sweep and then we’ll set him up somewhere and have a talk.”

The soldier nods, and lets go of the doctor, who slumps to the floor with a loud thud.

“Jesus, be _careful_. I said no brain damage.”

He doesn’t answer, and Rumlow kicks the cable ties closer and then turns away.

 

 

The place is big, stupid-useless big, because apparently being a crooked Hydra doctor pays well even if you don’t do it often enough to get caught. As he’d thought, there is no one else inside; no sign of anyone, either. The main living areas of the house are a mess, too, which he figures is good—it means that this guy has been hanging out here alone with no one coming to clean up for him. People like Reyner, he knows, _always_ need someone else to clean up for them.

And all of that means privacy, which is one thing that the three of them will definitely need in the coming days.

Once he’s done checking the house, Rumlow goes back and looks through the cabinets in the bathrooms—the master, the guest rooms, the one in the furnished basement. He takes his time, appreciating the warmth of the house on his cold skin even if he hasn’t found what he is looking for yet, and then in a little cabinet next to the microwave in the trash-cluttered kitchen he finds it, _finally_ : a vial of hydrocodone next to the half-empty Tylenol. A personal supply, not a crooked doctor’s supply, but it’ll do for now. He takes two pills with water from the sink, drinks more water out of the least-dirty glass he can find. The tiled kitchen floor is filthy and gritty under the soles of his boots.

He puts the glass down on a rare empty spot on the counter, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, exhales. This is—good, all things considered. This is going well.

He makes his way, slowly, through several long corridors and back to the busted-open panic room.

“All clear,” he says as he steps past the mangled door. “Let’s—”

Rumlow stops.

The doctor is on the floor, still unconscious, ankles bound and arms secure behind his back with the cable ties—that part is what he expected. But the soldier is not standing up guarding him, or even sitting nearby. He’s slumped back against a wall several feet away, head resting on his knees. He does not look up when Rumlow steps closer.

“ _Hey_ ,” Rumlow says. What the hell? The soldier had been doing fine. Is he just tired?

He steps closer, avoiding the bound middle-aged man slumped on the floor, and nudges the soldier’s filthy boot with the toe of his own, lightly at first, then harder. The soldier twitches.

“I tied him up and I checked,” he mumbles against his knees.

“That’s nice,” Rumlow says. “Now get the fuck up, we are not done.”

The soldier doesn’t move, except for his head pressing forward a little more into the fabric. His human hand looks like it’s shaking slightly. “I tied him up and I checked,” he says again. He says the words like he barely remembers what they mean.

Fuck, Rumlow thinks.

With some difficulty, he lowers himself down onto the carpet next to the soldier, and then lifts his head up from his knees to get a closer look. The soldier’s skin is flushed and wet, and strands of dirty hair are sticking to his skin with the sweat. His eyes are closed.

“Soldier,” he says, and taps the wet skin of his cheek gently with the palm of his good hand. “Soldier, _report_.”

The soldier opens his eyes, makes an effort to look up at him. He doesn’t seem to be able to focus his eyes.

Rumlow had not overestimated how sick he was, after all. He’d just underestimated the soldier’s unerring ability to put his mission before physical catastrophe.

He takes a deep breath, resists the urge to swear. They’d been doing so _well_ , and if the soldier had just been able to hold out for even a few more _hours_ before he decided to—

But that doesn’t matter now. The doctor is still unconscious anyway. Rumlow can get him somewhere more secure, away from any of the communication equipment in this room, and then he can focus on making sure the soldier doesn’t up and die on him. It’s a hiccup. As long as the soldier survives, it’s just a hiccup.

The bathroom in the basement is the furthest place from the front door that’s easy to clean. Getting the man down the stairs is a bitch, but manages to drag him across the fancy carpet, and then across the tiles of the nice bathroom floor. He fixes him to a pipe next to the toilet with another cable tie, tests it for strength, and checks the man’s pulse. Steady, although he is still out cold. Those batons work really fucking well, even the weak versions.

“Wait there,” he says to the unconscious man. “I won’t be long.”

This turns out to be optimistic.

 

 

“I am going to throw up,” the soldier says, softly, when Rumlow gets back to the busted-up panic room.

“Well, get out of this room first.”

The soldier doesn’t move. He’s still sitting with his head resting on his knees, filthy hair falling forward and blocking any view of his face.

“I’m not gonna fucking carry you.”

Nothing.

It’s tempting, very tempting, just to leave him here. Rumlow is tired, fucking tired, with a new edge of drowsiness from the pills, and the soldier will probably survive here alone, more or less.

But that isn’t how he’s gotten this far. He has been _nice_ , like he’d said back when he’d found him. And now the soldier has collapsed like an overworked pack animal, and it’s because he had pushed himself too much. Rumlow had seen him push himself before, of course—that was the soldier’s _job_ —but this time the soldier had done it just for _him_ , even though Rumlow hadn’t even been sure the soldier recognized him.

Clearly, he had underestimated a lot of things.

Rumlow sighs, nudges the soldier's boot where it's pressed against the fancy thick carpet. “Okay,” he says. “You’re fucking lucky I’m so nice.”

The soldier doesn’t respond.

Rumlow drags him. Under the shoulders, losing his grip once or twice with his bad hand, and hitting a few important body parts on the way, but he does it: out of the panic room, past the smashed-up door, down the carpeted hallway, through the nearest bedroom—an unused guest room, he assumes, because it isn’t filthy—and into the attached bathroom.

“You get a bathroom as well,” he says. “Everyone gets a bathroom.”

This one is even nicer than the one in the basement: bright and shiny and bigger than a bedroom in an average house would be. This would usually be impressive, Rumlow supposes, but now it just means he has to drag the soldier further, and this means that they don’t quite make it.

Halfway across the too-big bathroom floor, the soldier suddenly moves, yanking himself out of Rumlow’s grasp, and Rumlow barely has time to step back before the soldier leans forward and vomits all over those nice shiny tiles. Then he collapses onto the floor, right on top of the mess he’d just made, because until now everything wasn’t disgusting enough.

“Jesus Christ,” Rumlow says.

But he is being nice, and he has dealt with worse, so he just grabs him by his left arm and resumes dragging him the few final feet to the shower, pulling open the glass door and dumping him inside. The soldier slumps down on his side in the stall, arms wrapped around his stomach, a disgusting, vomit-smeared mess.

He steps away from him, easing his way around the mess on the floor. There are no towels in the bathroom—maybe the good doctor had poached them from his guest rooms, being too good to do his own laundry—but the rack that formerly contained them still has a few washcloths, and he grabs those, turns back to the man he’d just dumped in the stall.

The soldier might have recognized him before, but he doesn’t seem to now. He looks sick and empty, more confused than he had been in the car, and it’s enough to make unease curl in Rumlow’s stomach.

He pushes the thought away, and steps into the stall as well. The soldier doesn’t move, just lies there still, his hand still shaking slightly, until Rumlow turns on the water.

The drugs must be making him dopey, or maybe it’s just old habit, but he’d forgotten that the water would be cold, and the soldier is, unfortunately, directly under the spray. He shudders, curls up violently, left arm wrapped around his legs like he is protecting himself. Rumlow steps back a little out of habit, his back brushing against the tiles.

Just stepping back would have been useless, of course, if the soldier had decided to do anything, but in any case it turns out to be unnecessary. The soldier might be confused, but he does not lash out, does not even try.

“Sorry,” Rumlow says down to him over the sound of the water. “It’ll warm up.” And then he just watches, carefully. The soldier is still curled up, but he’s made no automatic show of defense, not even a little.

The water warms, turns pleasant, and Rumlow carefully adjusts it to something comfortable. There’s a new bar of soap on the holder, and grabs it and eases himself down onto the floor, letting the spray hit him on the back through his clothes, wetting his hair.

The soldier looks up at him, eyes wide on his dripping face, and clearly he has no clue where either of them are. But he still doesn’t move.

Rumlow smiles. “I got burned into you pretty deep, didn’t I,”

The soldier doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even flinch when Rumlow touches his hair.

And he stays like that, too. He lets Rumlow take off his clothes, which isn’t a pleasant experience, but at least is a relatively easy one. Underneath all the unwashed layers, the soldier looks surprisingly healthy: he’s lost weight, but not that much. The skin around his metal arm looks sore and inflamed, but apart from that there’s no signs of whatever injuries he must have sustained while fucking up his last mission. Maybe he hadn’t actually received any injuries; maybe he had just decided to fuck off. That’s something for Rumlow to find out later, though.

Washing him is not a pleasant experience either. The soap has some flowery smell that reminds him of a grandma, and mixed with the other smells it’s plain disgusting. He shoves the used washcloths into the corner of the shower with the pile of the soldier’s clothing, uses the detachable showerhead to rinse most of the vomit on the floor down the drain. The soldier is compliant, at least, moving into whatever position Rumlow guides him into. He almost seems _comfortable_ , all slack and acquiescent and trusting so that Rumlow almost feels dumb for worrying about being murdered by that metal arm five minutes ago.

The big room fills up with steam, and the water eventually runs clear, and the soldier smells like old-lady perfume instead of a homeless camp.

“Okay,” Rumlow says. He stands up, slow, and turns off the water. His own clothes have gotten wet as well, the gauze wet and clumpy and sticking to him uncomfortably. In front of him, the soldier curls up a little now that the warmth has gone.

“Stay there,” he says, and goes looking for something to use as a towel, because he hadn’t planned that far ahead.

He briefly considers and then decides against stripping the covers off the bed in the bedroom, and then finally finds a folded-up blanket on a shelf in the closet. The blanket smells like flowers, like someone had put fancy shit in the cupboard as well. This doctor either has a decorator or a dead ex-wife, or he is into some seriously gay shit.

The shower water has cooled unpleasantly on his skin when he steps back into the bright bathroom. He moves around the shallow puddle of water still collecting around the drain in the floor, gets closer to the open shower stall, and sees—

“Oh, Jesus _Christ_ ,” he says. “Really?”

The soldier doesn’t respond: he is still curled up on the floor of the shower. He doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed of himself.

“I just _washed_ you.”

No response: the room is silent except for the quiet plinking sounds of water dripping from the still-hanging showerhead.

Rumlow swears and throws the blanket he’s holding aside.

He spends the next five minutes cleaning his supposed subordinate up like he is a goddamn baby. Because he is being so nice, and because he needs him.

“You are gonna make this up for me later,” he says quietly, and of course the soldier just lies there like an idiot and doesn’t seem to even hear. “You have no fucking idea how much.”

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Rumlow is waiting in the soldier’s cell.

It isn’t that different from the cells he has seen for holding other Hydra prisoners. The door is reinforced, and there’s an electronic lock on the outside with bolts as thick as his arm, but Rumlow has never actually seen those bolts engaged, or any other extra security measures in force. It’s above his pay grade to ask why. There’s a shower area in one corner, too, which is another unusual thing, although Rumlow has way more of an idea why _that_ is there. But apart from that, it’s all boring: bed, toilet, ceiling, walls, floor. Bright, cheap lights overhead that feel like they’ll give him a headache if he stays in here too long.

The cell is empty right now, except for Rumlow himself, who sits on the edge of the bed and waits, absently rubbing at the sore muscles in his neck. He’s tired tonight, and in a bad mood: it had been a bitch of a mission.

And apparently everyone else is in a bad mood tonight as well, given how long they’re taking with the soldier.

It’s a while before the unlocked door is hauled open, and two men shuffle in, dragging the soldier between them. A man on the soldier’s left who barely has his gun secured properly, another on his right who looks like he’s never _touched_ a gun in his life, and who is carrying a clipboard under one arm.

Rumlow stands up, glares at them both. He barely glances at the soldier: he’s seen him enough times in this condition that he doesn’t have to.

The man without the gun dislodges the soldier’s arm from around his shoulder and steps forward, leaving the other guy trying and failing to prop up the whole of the soldier’s weight behind him. He holds his clipboard out to Rumlow. “Sign here,” he says.

Rumlow signs.

The man lifts the top sheet of paper from the clipboard, tears off another sheet of carbonless copy paper underneath it, and hands it to him. “Here’s your copy of the transfer form.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”

“Secretary says he wants everything in hard copy, ever since—”

“Okay, whatever. Get lost already.”

The man backs up, shoving his stupid clipboard back under his arm. Rumlow folds up the sheet of copy paper like he’s breaking its spine, stuffs it in his pocket. Clipboard guy nods at the other man, who lets go of the soldier with visible eagerness and turns towards the door. The soldier slides to the ground, hitting the concrete floor with a loud thud. A moment later, the heavy door closes behind the two men.

Rumlow straightens up, cracking his sore neck, and sighs. Paper copies, he thinks. Of all the fucking things.

The room is silent except for the soldier’s rough breathing on the floor in front of him. His hair is wet, hanging over his face, clumped together with blood. He hadn’t caught himself before he fell, which is not a good sign.

Rumlow takes a breath to say something, but the soldier is already pulling himself up to his feet. That’s another bad sign, actually: Rumlow has never ordered the soldier to stand to attention before on any of the other times they’ve met in this room. Making himself stand up automatically probably means that the soldier has no idea who Rumlow is.

Rumlow takes a small step forward, grabbing the soldier's chin and tilting his head down a little to get a good look at him. The top layers of skin are gone from most of one side of his face. He smells like raw meat.

“You know me?” Rumlow says.

The soldier blinks, but appears to remember how to talk. “Commander,” he says, his voice rough.

“Do you _remember_ me.”

“Yes, sir.”

He’s lying, though; the soldier is barely looking at him. He is clearly drugged—they always drug him beforehand when it’s going to be bad, for the sake of safety, not mercy—but even that doesn't explain this lack of focus. Not on him.

He should have stayed in the room with the others. Rumlow had left around the time it started getting bad, because what they did to the soldier at times like this was both distasteful and not Rumlow’s own choice. That’s what he gets for trusting anyone else to do anything right around here, he supposes.

The soldier is still standing in front of him, seemingly holding himself upright by force of will more than by any physical means. His nose has started bleeding.

“Whatever,” Rumlow says. “Get to the shower.”

 

 

Physically cleaning the soldier is very much _below_ Rumlow’s pay grade, and it would have been easy to get someone else to do it. He could have ordered clipboard guy to do it on the spot, in fact—that would have been amusing. But it’s a good trust exercise, and more importantly, washing the soldier at a time like this always hurts him a _lot_ , and honestly that part is just nice to watch: seeing the soldier trying to keep it together in front of Rumlow, trying to be all brave and appreciative no matter how nasty Rumlow got.

But tonight isn’t like that. The soldier still barely knows who Rumlow is, and he makes no effort to keep it together: makes no effort at anything, really. He just accepts it all: standing silently while Rumlow strips him, moving obedientlyinto the corner of the room with the drain, jolting with surprise at the flow of cold water. When Rumlow starts scrubbing him down, he hangs his head forward and leans against the wall, moaning openly from the pain. Rumlow might as well be doing this to one of their normal prisoners. He might as well be helping an injured puppy. It’s no fun at all.

Rumlow tries to get a better look at him as he works, maneuvering to keep his own clothed body out of the cold spray of the water. The other men had fucked him, obviously, and beaten him half to death, but none of that is that unusual or enough to explain his current condition. He looks bruised all over, and his face is a fucking mess, but that’s pretty standard as well.

“What the hell did they do to you?” he says.

No answer. The soldier is staring vaguely at the floor in front of him, pink-tinted water dripping off his hair.Rumlow grabs his arm and pulls him around to face him better, then slaps him on the damaged side of his face to get his attention. It makes a loud, wet sound.

The soldier sniffs, lifts his head to look at him. His nose is still bleeding.

“What did they do?” Rumlow repeats.

He watches the soldier try to answer: the other man looks as though he’s trying to remember something that happened two decades ago, rather than half an hour. Rumlow had grabbed his human arm, and the skin is wet and cool under his grip. “I was asking them,” he says. He's looking down again now, but it seems less out of shame or deference and more from not knowing he isn’t supposed to speak to the floor. “I…”

“Speak _up_.”

The soldier frowns. “I asked them and they kicked me.”

“Asked them what?”

He doesn’t seem to understand the question. Rumlow lets go of his arm and grabs a handful of wet hair instead. The soldier winces. The water is still hitting him on the shoulders and back: drops of it are soaking through the fabric of Rumlow’s t-shirt, cold against his skin.

“Where did they kick you?” he asks.

“Head.”

He pulls the soldier’s hair, just a bit, to keep his attention on him. “How many times?”

The soldier looks like he’s trying to figure it out, but then he apparently loses the train of thought.

Rumlow lets go of his hair and sighs. “I’ll talk to them about that.”

Usually, the soldier would thank him: this time, he barely seems to hear.

“Turn around,” Rumlow says. “Let me finish cleaning you up.”

He does, and it continues to not be any fun. Hurting something that’s already this broken might be amusing enough for some of the other idiots here, but it’s not enough for him. If the soldier doesn’t get better quick—or if he gets _worse_ and Rumlow has to get a doctor or organize some goddamn _surgery_ tonight or some shit—he is going to go in tomorrow and crack some heads himself.

But for now he just does his job, because he’s a professional. Finishes cleaning the soldier, dries him off with a towel he’d brought down here with him, dresses him in new clothes. Gives him a drink of water and helps him rinse his mouth out. The soldier accepts this all, and seems slightly more able to follow instructions than he had earlier, but that might just be Rumlow being optimistic.

“There you go,” he says when he's done. The soldier stands there, looking vaguely corpselike in the harsh overhead light, but it’s still an improvement. Less blood, at least. “You tired?”

“Yes,” the soldier says.

That part is clearly the truth, at least.

“Wait there,” he says, as if the soldier was capable of doing anything else.

He steps away, stopping to dry his hands and forearms on the discarded towel, and then opens the cell door and slips out into the empty corridor to turn off the lights in the cell. Not all the lights turn off, though—there’s a faint red emergency light of some sort up in one corner that keeps glowing—and when Rumlow goes back in he can still see the soldier, who is standing there motionless like he has already been frozen.

Rumlow sits down on the edge of the bed, and pats his knee. “C’mere.”

The soldier doesn’t move. His face looks blank and vaguely terrified

Rumlow sighs. “Come. Here.”

The soldier moves, because of course he does: this is why no one bothers to lock the door to his cell, or to transport him with people who are actually good at their jobs. He comes over to him and, at Rumlow’s gesture, folds himself down to kneel on the concrete next to Rumlow's feet. Closer, Rumlow can see the expression on his face more clearly: he looks plain _defeated_ , resigned, and it’s no fun at all.

He apparently still barely remembers who Rumlow is, but he has enough remaining brainpower to guess what he _wants_ : the soldier leans in, reaching forward to start undoing his pants.

Rumlow stops him, pushing his hands away.

The soldier doesn’t look up at him. He doesn’t look relieved: he is probably wondering whether something worse is going to happen. He looks like he is shaking a little. His hair is still wet, dripping onto the floor, onto the toes of Rumlow's boots.

“Here,” Rumlow says, and reaches out for him. “Just stay right here.”

He presses on the soldier’s head, gently moving him until the side of the soldier’s face rests against Rumlow’s thigh.

The soldier is tense and moves awkwardly, but he lets him, and keeps his head there. He doesn’t move for a long time, and wetness slowly soaks through Rumlow's pants from the soldier’s hair. Rumlow rests his hand firm on the back of the soldier’s neck. The only sound is the dripping from the bad taps in the shower.

It takes a long time, but the soldier relaxes, very slightly, the tension in his neck easing, his breathing slowing down. Rumlow rubs the back of his neck: the soldier’s skin is so again warm already, even after the cold water of the shower. He takes his time, because even if nothing else is going as planned, at least sitting like this in the dark is nice enough. It’s not like he’s particularly horny anyway, not with the soldier in this miserable state.

So he just stays like that, rubbing the back of the soldier’s neck and his shoulders. “There,” he says. “Isn’t that better?”

The soldier nods, and then he moves to wrap his right arm around Rumlow’s legs.

That’s—very good. The soldier has done that before, and that means he remembers, or close to it.

He’s getting better. Rumlow won’t have to crack heads after all. Not hard, anyway.

He pets his hair some more, and the soldier pushes his face harder against his thigh. Finally, he speaks.

“I didn’t do anything,” he says. His voice is low and flat, more like he’s replying to a question Rumlow asked than making a declaration. “I don’t know what I did.”

Rumlow wouldn’t have his job if he wasn’t good at putting together the weird broken fragments that make up the soldier’s attempts at human experience, so he figures it out. “That’s what you asked them?” he says, still rubbing his neck. “Before they kicked you? You asked them what you did wrong?”

The soldier nods against his leg, and then takes a deep shaky breath. "I didn't do anything," he says again.

Rumlow almost smiles. It’s—almost _touching_ , really. That someone who has experienced everything that the soldier has could still somehow believe that life was _fair_ ; that the people hurting him must be doing so for a reason.

He forces the amused expression off his face: it might be pretty dark in here, but the soldier’s eyesight is good. “Hey,” he says and then moves his hand and turns the soldier’s head to look up at him.

The soldier looks. His eyes look very dark in this light.

Rumlow has this particular job and all its perks because he is nice, and because he knows what is best for the soldier. So he lies.

“You were sloppy,” he says. “Slow. Everything took too long today.”

It’s only _mostly_ false. Everything _had_ taken too long, but that hadn’t been the soldier’s fault, and even in his damaged state the soldier must be able to sense the bullshit, because he looks indignant. “I didn’t…”

“You were bad,” Rumlow says, firm.

“None of that was my fault,” the soldier says.

He’s genuinely indignant, and it’s finally _there_ again, the spark of friction that makes the soldier so fun to deal with. Playing out endlessly in his brain, like an irritant in a wound that stops it from healing—the poor wretch never stops _trying_ , and you can get _decades_ of amusement out of that.

This time, Rumlow can’t help but let himself smile. But then he forces it off his face and straightens up a bit, taking his hand off the soldier’s head.

“Oh really?” he says. “You wanna explain exactly how I’m wrong, then?”

The soldier scowls and doesn’t answer. He’s glaring, but even in the dim light Rumlow can see that his expression is uncertain, his eyes fixed desperately on Rumlow’s face.

He wants badly to trust him, Rumlow can see it. He wants it _so badly_.

Something in that look—the openness of it, the vulnerability—makes Rumlow want to break that trust, split it open and crush it. Makes him want to tell him the truth. Tell him _Pierce hates you. He orders the men to hurt you because he fucking_ hates _you, and you don’t even remember why, and you never will_.

But he isn’t stupid. He is not going to jeopardize the fact that right now they can keep the soldier in here like this, with the door unlocked, with no restraints. It's not worth it.

“You just finished drooling all over the fucking floor, and now you’re going to correct me about how our day went?" he says instead. "That it? I'm all ears. Enlighten me.”

The soldier scowls some more, but finally he drops his head again, and presses his face once more into Rumlow’s leg. But it has worked. The soldier doesn’t telegraph these type of emotions as well as he does pain, but there’s a change in the posture of his body: the soldier might be pissed off, but he is also  _relieved_. Personal failure, even personal failure that doesn’t match up with his own memories of a few hours ago, is a far better option than the idea of being punished for nothing.

Rumlow lets him rest like that, lets it all sink in for a little while.“Come on,” he says eventually. “Let’s get you into bed.”

 

 

He is gentle with the soldier, later, genuinely slow and careful, but there wasn’t ever going to be a way to make it not hurt, not after what they'd done to him before. But the soldier is already better, already himself again. He remembers Rumlow properly now, can tell he’s being gentle, and so—he tries. Rolling over into the right position when Rumlow tells him to, bracing himself against the bed’s stiff white sheets when Rumlow starts, and Rumlow _finally_ gets what he wants, the soldier desperately hiding how much pain he is in, trying to do his _best_ for him. The tenseness, the tightness in his jaw, the forced neutral expression when the soldier looks at him…

... and then it all falls apart after, like it always does, and the soldier starts to cry.

“Shh,” Rumlow says, and he lets the soldier rest his head against his shoulder, pets his damp hair. “It’s okay. You did your best.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> Please leave a comment and let me know if you’re reading this and want more! I respond like a trained lab rat to feedback and will abandon everything without it, so I need to know if anyone is actually reading this.


	4. Chapter 4

 

The soldier is _way_ worse now.

Staring at him from the floor of the shower, still naked and wet from Rumlow cleaning him off again, back pressed against the tiled wall, knees clumsily in front of him, vacant as a dead thing. He’s pale and dull all over, except for the mutilated area around his left shoulder, which is bright red and inflamed-looking all the way up to his neck, as if something in there is infected. He had not objected to being touched, and now he doesn’t seem to notice that Rumlow has stopped.

He looks fucking _bad_ , and it hadn’t occurred to Rumlow until now that what is happening right now might not just be drug withdrawal, and might not be something the soldier gets over—that Hydra might have pumped him with something slow-release and deadly that would just melt his brain completely. Rumlow has never seen the soldier reach _this_ stage before; he has no idea what happens next. The only person who might know is unconscious two stories beneath them.

But Rumlow hasn’t come this far by being pessimistic about the soldier’s endurance, so he will ignore it for now. He might as well assume the best, since there is fuck-all else he can do. His plans are useless without the soldier.

He makes his way to the bathroom sink, where he fills up one of the shiny glasses sitting on its granite surface. He returns, the soles of his boots splashing in the water left on the shower floor, and holds out the full glass to the soldier.

For a moment, the soldier simply stares. Then finally, in the first real sign of higher brain activity since Rumlow had entered the bathroom, he shakes his head. Water drips off the ends of his hair with the motion. 

Rumlow steps forward and shoves the glass closer. His movements are clumsy enough that some of the liquid sloshes out. “Drink,” he says, louder, and the soldier’s slack expression hardens into blind, childish anger. His left arm twitches.

Whatever, Rumlow thinks. If the soldier snaps and punches him, he’ll die quickly at least.

He pushes the water forward again, so that the glass is almost touching the soldier’s mouth. The soldier’s metal hand twitches again, rises, drops, and then slowly comes up. His hand wraps around the glass, metal hitting the surface with a loud clink. Slowly, he tips it back to his mouth and drinks. A little bit of water drips off his jaw. 

So the idiot still has enough conditioning left to respond to shows of authority. That’s something Rumlow can work with.

He still smells of flowery grandma soap Rumlow had used to wash him with, and watching the soldier finish the glass dead-eyed and wipe his mouth with a grimace while smelling like that is akin to the experience of killing a man with one of those crocheted toilet roll covers. Rumlow reaches out for the empty glass, and then the soldier suddenly speaks.

“Take this thing off of me,” he says. His voice is quiet, even in the echoey tiles of the shower.

“What?” Rumlow says, too quickly. It’s a miracle soldier can even _talk_ given how fucked up he looks, but also—what the hell is he talking _about_? He’s not tied up; he’s not even wearing anything. “What d’you mean, soldier?”

The soldier’s face crumples for a second, like Rumlow had asked the question in order to deliberately fuck with him. He recovers, but it takes him a long time to put more words together. “Get it off me,” he repeats.

“You’re not making sense, kid,” Rumlow says, grabbing the glass back.

The soldier’s face crumples again, like he is looking for more words and can’t find them. His human fist clenches where it’s resting on his bare right knee. It’s kind of—admirable, really, him being half-dead and still working so hard.

Rumlow waits, letting the soldier struggle. He _is_ struggling, more than Rumlow had realized: he is tense and almost trembling, his chest moving with his quick breathing.

 _“Что ты делаешь со мной_ ,” he says softly, so softly that Rumlow is not even sure he’s actually trying to talk out loud. _What are you doing to me_.

“Hydra is gone now,” Rumlow says. “You used to belong to Hydra, but now you belong to me. Do you understand?”

The soldier stares in his direction, blinking.

“Do you _understand_ ,” Rumlow says again.

“No,” says the soldier mildly.

“That’s because Hydra did a shitty goddamn job,” Rumlow says.

 

* * *

 

 Hydra’s former finest assassin had succeeded too well at his earlier task for the doctor to be any help: the man is still mostly unconscious in the basement bathroom, and he barely responds when Rumlow slaps him, does not answer any questions.

“Fuck,” he says. So much about being careful about brain damage.

But there probably isn’t much the doctor could do anyway. If the soldier is being poisoned, it’s not like every random Hydra-affiliated doctor would still be carrying around the antidote. So he just double-checks that he’s tied up well enough, goes upstairs to take another pill, and then gets on with a bunch of stuff that he really could have used the soldier’s help for.

The gate outside is still disabled, so he moves the car into the property, brings the rest of his gear and the soldier’s backpack into the house. Reactivates the gate—he can worry about the other security stuff later. There had been other plans, too, but the giant living room on the first floor has a giant couch and a full bar, and it has been a long fucking day and the soldier might die tonight, which means Rumlow’s plan is fucked and tomorrow he’ll have to get around to killing the doctor and himself. Talk about a shitty to-do list.

He falls asleep on the couch an hour later, and when he wakes up in the morning it is over.

 

* * *

 

In the bathroom upstairs, the soldier has moved himself into the bathtub, which is almost long enough to accommodate his height. He’s curled up under the blanket Rumlow had brought in yesterday, and there are no surprise bodily fluids. He looks not-dead and almost peaceful.

It’s a fucking miracle. The doctor is awake too, judging from all the yelling Rumlow had heard while he was getting himself up the stairs. Maybe they’ll survive to the end of the day after all.

He leans against the door frame, rubbing the side of his head. The lights are still on, and he can see that the soldier is pretending to be asleep again now, and is even doing a reasonable job of it. He steps into the room, goes over to the toilet, flips the seat up. The soldier still doesn’t move.

Rumlow says: “I know you’re not sleeping through a guy taking a piss five feet from your head. Wake the fuck up.”

The soldier’s eyes crack open. He looks pissed off, which is a good sign: that’s closer to normal for him. Rumlow smiles to himself briefly as he washes his hands. It’s remarkable, how well he heals. The soldier might even be up to getting this shit started right away. “How you feeling?”

“My head hurts,” the soldier says. His voice is weak and croaky, like he has ten times the hangover Rumlow does.

“Mine too,” Rumlow says. “Stand up, and get out of the bath.”

The soldier hesitates but then does it, but sways, his balance off as Rumlow steps closer to him.

“Stand still,” Rumlow snaps. “I’m trying to get a look at you.”

He tries, and Rumlow grabs the blanket that the soldier is still holding and drops it aside. The soldier scowls, but relaxes into it: being inspected physically is something he is used to.

He still looks like crap: pale, patches of skin on his face and neck dry and almost peeling, his lips are so cracked the bottom one has split near the middle. Way more concerning is his shoulder: now that the soldier is upright, the area around seam where the skin turns to metal looks odd, as if the arm has been wrenched out of place and not put back in right.

“It’ll have to do,” Rumlow says. The soldier is still dazed, but maybe that’s actually a feature and not a bug at this point. “Wait there, and let’s get you dressed.”

The soldier’s clothes are still in a wet pile on the floor of the shower where he had briefly rinsed them off last night. Rumlow brings them back, prompts the soldier to pull them back on, followed by his shoes: by the end of it, the soldier is cringing and shivering and looks about as uncomfortable as you’d expect for someone who has just been forced back into wet and not-very-clean clothes. But he is still upright.

“Better?” Rumlow asks.

The soldier gives him a look that can almost definitely be interpreted as _are you fucking kidding me_. His lower lip is bleeding a little.

“Good,” Rumlow says like he had been given an actual answer. “Now. We’re both gonna go downstairs to see a doctor.”

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 “That’s _crazy_ ,” Reyner says. “I can’t.”

Rumlow is leaning on the edge of the sink, above where the doctor is huddled on the floor next to the toilet, hands still fastened with cable ties. The soldier’s next to him, upright, looming above them both and doing a good job of looking reasonably stable. Rumlow doesn’t answer, so the doctor just stumbles onwards verbally. “I—I don’t have enough of my equipment here, or—”

“Then I’ll fucking get it myself,” Rumlow says. “I know the fancy stuff you guys had access to. Plus, anything you have will be better than the shitty hospital they stuck me in.”

The doctor blinks, shrinks back a little into the wall behind him. He looks over at the soldier, and the sight is apparently scary enough: after closing his eyes for a second he says: “Okay. Show me, then.” He adds: “I’ll need my hands to examine you.”

He’s trying to sound confident now, clearly, but it doesn’t work much when you’re tied up on a floor beside a toilet.

Rumlow uses his knife to cut through the cable ties, and Reyner gets to his feet, unsteady. For a second he looks as pale and sick as the soldier had yesterday, even though Rumlow had fed him last night. He steps over to wash his hands in the sink, walking in a little arc across the narrow room so he can avoid the soldier as much as possible, and then takes hold of the hand Rumlow holds out to him.

The doctor’s fingers fingers are damp, too cool. Just the touch makes Rumlow want to go for the stun baton that’s still on his belt. Up this close, he smells like old sweat and faintly of bathroom cleaner.

“These should have been splinted better,” he says, looking at Rumlow’s fingers. The overhead lights in the bathroom are bright, and it’s really obvious in this light just how much of a fucking mess they are.

“I was a little busy,” Rumlow says.

He turns the hand over, examining. “It’s not as bad as it could be. I don’t think you’ll need grafts, at least. I can—”

“Stop fucking talking about it and start planning for an outcome that lets you live.”

The doctor nods, swallows, and finally the damp fingers let him go. He looks at Rumlow, squaring his shoulders a little. “I’ll need to see your knee, as well.”

The next few minutes pass very unpleasantly. The soldier continues to stare at them in silence, and barely seems to actually be able to focus at this point, but it’s okay: the doctor doesn’t notice, he’s too busy groping Rumlow’s knee all over like a fucking pervert.

“I can try,” the doctor says finally, after he stands again and lets Rumlow pull his pants back up. “Maybe. But I won’t be able to knock you out for it. General anesthetic would require—”

“I know how fucking general anesthetic works.” Rumlow finishes doing up his belt, and pulls the half-empty orange pill bottle out of his pocket. “I’m gonna need a lot more of these, as well. Write out something for them or whatever doctor shit you gotta do.”

The doctor looks at the pills, and then up at Rumlow, blinking slowly. “Are you sure you want to keep on taking so many—”

“I’m not an addict, are you fucking blind? I am in fucking pain.”

“Addicts can be in pain.”

“Oh, how touching. Poetic. _You’re_ gonna be in fucking pain soon unless you get me something good, doc. Something for the surgery, too. Maybe then I won’t get mad and kill you halfway through.”

But the doctor just keeps giving him that look. It’s the same look he has seen before from a _lot_ of doctors: the ones at his last hospital, the ones from a bunch of his injuries before that. Like Rumlow is just a patient, with no power of choice, no power over _anything_.

It’s clear the soldier is the only one the doctor is actually afraid of, and Rumlow needs to do something about that.

Rumlow shoves the pills back in his pocket. There’s a good chance that what he’s going to do will backfire, he knows, but that’s just the way things are right now.

“Hey,” he says to the soldier. “You. Come here.”

The soldier stares for a second and then steps toward him, and next to Rumlow, the doctor takes an automatic step back. A little thudding sound as his back hits the towel rack next to the sink.

Rumlow raises his good hand, like he’s beckoning, but then reaches up, quick—not too quick for the soldier to stop him if he wanted to, of course—and grabs the soldier by the hair.

He yanks the soldier toward him like that, and the soldier hisses, bears his teeth like an animal about to strike and then—

Does nothing. He goes limp in his grasp, his head dipping forward a little so that his gaze is on the bright tiled floor. Rumlow can almost see the muscles in his upper back and shoulders relaxing through the fabric of his clothes.

“You gonna take care of this guy while I’m sick?” Rumlow asks him.

It seems to take the soldier a moment to process the question, but then he nods, as much as he can with Rumlow’s hand still tight in his hair. His hair feels silky against Rumlow’s fingers, unusually clean from being washed.

“Answer me.”

“Yes,” the soldier says dully, eyes still on the floor.

“And if he messes up, you’ll take care of _him_ , right?”

“Yes,” the soldier says again.

He barely sounds like he understands, honestly, but it does the job: Reyner’s face is very white, and the condescending-doctor look is gone.

“You won’t kill me,” he says, eventually, his voice quiet. “If I help you?”

Rumlow smiles at him, lets go of the soldier’s hair.

“Of course I won’t,” he says.

* * *

The soldier follows him back upstairs from the basement and into the filthy kitchen. The doctor had asked for an hour to begin to plan, and there’s a good chance he’ll just spend that time crying and plotting dumb escape attempts, but whatever; Rumlow is hungry right now anyway.

“Sit down,” Rumlow says. There’s an open dining area right next to the kitchen that’s mostly taken up by a large wooden table. It’s just as covered in trash as everything else in the house, but it’ll keep the soldier out of the way while he finds them some food. He gestures towards the table, but the soldier doesn’t move, just stands there looking at him.

“What?” Rumlow snaps.

Silence, a long silence this time, like the soldier has forgotten how to talk entirely. Finally he says: “You are going to kill him.”

“Of _course_ I’m gonna fucking kill him. Do I look like an idiot?”

The soldier doesn’t answer, just glares down at the dirty floor.

“Sit down,” Rumlow repeats, and the soldier glares some more, but finally does it, dragging out one of the heavy chairs from the table and sitting down in it silently.

He turns on the light—he’d closed all the curtains last night, and the weather is pretty dismal outside anyway—and kicks aside a stray shopping bag full of trash to get to the pantry. The shelves are scattered with packers of snack food that the doctor had obviously stocked up on at some point, and it had been enough for Rumlow to raid for a quick meal last night, but the soldier needs something more substantial. He hasn’t eaten anything since they got here, and probably not for some time before that, as well. Which would explain why he’s acting like his body is trying to cannibalize his brain tissue.

All the meat in the doctor’s fridge has gone bad, but there are eggs in there at least. “Fuck, I’d kill for some bacon right now,” Rumlow says.

“Why am I here,” the soldier says.

Rumlow closes the fridge, sets the box of eggs down top of the clearest space he can find on the countertop, and turns to face the soldier, who is glaring at him from the table. “You weren’t listening down there? I need you to make sure the doctor does his job and doesn’t kill me.”

“Someone else could do that.”

“Why the fuck does it matter to you why? You weren’t taking care of yourself. Look at you. You couldn’t even shower.”

“I can shower,” the soldier mumbles.

“Whatever, kid. You should be happy it was me that found you.”

The soldier keeps glaring. He looks angry and suspicious and underneath all that, deeply, _deeply_ confused. It’s a nice expression to look at, to be honest. “You—” he says and then stops, wincing a little, angry at his own incomprehension. “You used me as a punching bag once.”

“I was better to you than anyone else, and nicer than anyone there was to _me_ , so stop fucking complaining.”

No answer: the soldier just stares, silent and angry. It’s like one of those sci-fi shows where the hero asks a computer an impossible question and it keeps thinking until it blows up. Finally he says: “Pierce was nice to me.”

“ _Pierce was nice to me_ ,” Rumlow imitates. “Well, Pierce is fucking dead. What do you think about that?”

The soldier glares up at him for a long moment, and then, suddenly, kicks the table leg that’s closest to his foot. The thick wood splits, the heavy table jerking and tipping downwards even as the entire structure skids away a couple of feet across the wooden floor. One of the chairs on the other side tips over onto its back, hits the floor with a crack like a gunshot.

Rumlow takes a tiny step back.

In front of him, the soldier is staring down at the broken table. His eyes are wide, like he had forgotten he could do that. He looks up at Rumlow, and then down again. He looks absolutely _dumbfounded_ , and clearly he hadn’t noticed Rumlow’s reaction.

Rumlow exhales. Then he straightens up, wipes any trace of surprise off his face.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” he says. “You’re like a fucking child. You know that?” The soldier looks up at him, blinks, and he goes on: “How the hell did you manage to survive that long away from Hydra? How did you not fall down a storm drain or get caught in plastic fence and strangle yourself?”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, very good. ‘Fuck you.’ Amazing use of language. You been practicing that in the mirror?”

The soldier doesn’t answer for a minute. He is trembling a little now, but it’s not _fearful_ trembling—it reminds him of the rumblings sound he has heard, once or twice, before an earthquake. “You,” he says. “You need to…”

“What,” Rumlow says. You had to be on the offensive with the soldier when he got like this, no matter how messed up he is. You just had to dive right in and run directly towards danger.

He steps forward: he wants to get closer, more in the soldier’s line of sight.

“You—” the soldier tries again. He looks down at his hands, twisting and gripping with his metal fingers, then back up at Rumlow.

Rumlow reacts by stepping closer.

It seems to work—the trembling is still there, but when he speaks again, his voice is has quietened.

“They pulled my hair,” he says.

“It’s okay,” Rumlow says. He keeps going, closer. Gets right in front of him, in the space vacated by the now-broken table. “It’s okay,” he says again, gentle, and it’s all working fine, he’s going to be all reassuring again now, and then feed the soldier something. That’s his plan, because he is not a monster and because the soldier obviously really needs some fucking food and Rumlow is pretty hungry himself…

…but of course, then the soldier fucks it all up.

When Rumlow takes a final step closer in front of him, the soldier yells _“NO”_ and shoves him away hard enough to knock him down.

Rumlow is on the floor, on his back and starting to sit up already, dirt digging into his palms and forearms. He’s not dead—it must have been the soldier’s right arm—but his whole body is yelling in pain, the damaged parts of him screaming.

“Don’t pull my hair,” the soldier says from above him.

The pain all turns to boiling rage in his gut, and he probably would have attacked the soldier anyway, just out of principle, even if it was suicidal, but Rumlow is also well versed in the soldier’s expressions. He can see how wide the soldier’s eyes are, the way his lower lip trembles—this isn’t suicidal, this is _necessary_.

Rumlow pulls himself up and doesn’t hesitate. He should have expected something like this, because the soldier is confused and damaged and has been pretending to be human for a while, even if he’d failed at it so hard. They just have to work past it. He grabs the soldier in one quick motion, one that hurts like hell but which almost manages to make him feel like his old self, pulling him to his feet.

The soldier growls, tensing, and once again does absolutely nothing.

“Don’t pull your hair, huh?” He grabs a handful of the soldier’s hair, pulls tight, shakes him like he’s a disobedient animal. The soldier still doesn’t resist. He is already folding up on himself, exactly like he had done the basement, all resistance gone. Rumlow lets go, slaps him across the face with his good hand. Then again, because he still hurts and it feels good. “Look at me.”

The soldier does. He looks _sick_ , pale and confused and angry, the split in his lower lip broken open and bleeding. Rumlow grabs his chin. “Okay,” he says, “we are gonna finish our talk now. Because I don’t want to listen to any more of your bullshit. I rescued you, soldier. I saved you. Your body was giving out and you didn’t even know it.”

“I—”

“Do _not_ fucking talk back to me.”

That works—he drops his eyes—and Rumlow keeps going. “First Hydra rescued you, Hydra _saved_ you, and you paid them back by being a little shit half of the time. But maybe that’s not your fault, because you’re pretty goddamn stupid.”

The soldier twitches, like those words genuinely hurt.

“But then you fuck up for _real_ , and you run away and leave the rest of us to deal with it—” he cuts off any coming argument by shifting his grip to his jaw, grabbing down harder “—and I am forced to come track you down like you’re runaway livestock, and then how the _fuck_ do you thank me?”

He loosens his grip, but the soldier doesn’t speak now, still looking down.

“Oh, you don’t want to talk now? What about just now when you were being a little bitch? Pretty vocal then, huh?”

The soldier still doesn’t speak: apart from his breathing, the room is quiet enough to hear the soft hum of the central heating.

“You belonged to Hydra,” Rumlow says. “Now you belong to me. And I’m treating you a lot better than they did, let’s get fucking honest about that. Did I complain about you crying about not wanting to kill people? Did I complain last night when I had to clean up your fucking waste?”

He feels the muscle in the soldier’s jaw jump as he clenches his teeth. Something finally seems to firm up inside him: he looks up at Rumlow, eyes narrowed. “It’s not not nice to pull people’s hair.”

Rumlow doesn’t get angry, or hit him again. He laughs instead, because it really is funny. He grips down tighter on his jaw for emphasis as he speaks, so that it feels like his fingers are bruising bone. “ _You—are—not—a—person_. You are a science experiment. You’re like if one of those fucking baking soda volcanos somehow learned to talk and now it won’t fucking shut up. The only _person_ here is the one that saved your goddamn life, and you need to learn that.” He grips harder. “Or is that too much to ask? Do you want me to send you to someone else?”

The raw terror in the soldier’s eyes only lasts for half a second before he closes them, but it’s long enough.

“What are we going to do about this, then,” Rumlow says. “How are you going to learn?”

Unsurprisingly, he does not get an answer. The soldier’s jaw is tight, his breathing loud and not quite steady, and his eyes are still closed like that is going to make the entire situation go away.

Rumlow lets go of his face, and reaches for the stun baton on his own belt.

 

 


End file.
